BINGHAMTON — With jobs already available in Pennsylvania and possibly soon-to-be available here in New York, the inaugural Broome County Natural Gas Career and Education Expo is set to give people all the information they need about available jobs and what skills they need for them.
The event, set for April 11 from 3 to 7 p.m. at the Broome Community College Ice Center at 907 Front St. will feature more than 30 vendors in the natural-gas development industry, says Broome County Legislator Stephen Herz (D–Windsor).
Herz says he got the idea to organize an event after participating as a guest lecturer for an engineering class at Broome Community College, he says. After that class, Herz says he received several phone calls from graduating seniors in the class asking for his advice on where to look for jobs. He told them to go to Bradford, Pa., where the natural-gas industry is booming.
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“Every single one of them called me back within two or three days with jobs,” Herz says. That made him realize that the jobs are out there already in Pennsylvania and will be here in New York once all the legal gas-drilling issues concerning hydrofracking (a controversial process that uses water and chemicals to break up natural gas deposits to extract them more easily) are sorted out. Hydrofracking is currently banned in New York.
Herz conceived the expo as a way to gather people and provide information about those jobs — both those currently available and those on the horizon — so he teamed up with the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, Inc., a group that promotes responsible natural-gas development, along with Broome Community College and Broome Tioga Workforce NY to plan the event.
“The response so far has been very good,” Herz says. He expects to draw vendors locally from Broome County as well as from the Syracuse area and into Pennsylvania. Several natural-gas companies will be there handing out and accepting applications for current job openings, while others will be providing information on the skills and training people will need to obtain jobs with them in the future, he says.
“This is as much an education event as an employment event,” Herz says. Some of the groups planning to participate include the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce, Unshackle Upstate, and a number of unions, he notes.
At this point, Herz says, it’s hard to gauge how many people might end up attending the free event, but he’s hoping for a strong turnout. He has received numerous calls about the event from around the Broome County area and into Pennsylvania.
Along with vendors, the event will include educational seminars and demonstrations of technologies used in the natural-gas industry to give a first-hand look at what types of jobs the industry creates, he says.
